


The Parisian Girl

by crackleviolet



Series: Violets are Blue [3]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, so jumin's relationship with mc is alluded to but the fic is not about that at all, this is a precursor to poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 04:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10632012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackleviolet/pseuds/crackleviolet
Summary: JuminV Week Day 6 Prompt: First KissMy last fic for JuminV week. This is set in Vabverse (between Shelter and VAB), but that isn’t necessary knowledge to understand and enjoy it. This fic is about V’s regrets in every instance he never revealed his true feelings to Jumin.





	

On the regular occasion that he looked back on his life, there were a lot of things Jihyun could honestly say he regretted. **  
**

As a student in Paris, he spent many hours walking the streets, going out of his way to capture it on film. It was only after he returned home, having spent years examining each and every angle of the city, that he realised he did not have a single one of the Eiffel Tower. And only after leaving did he understand that he had come to use it as an anchor.

He once took a flight to England on a whim and stopped Jumin in his tracks outside of the Bodleian library. It had been pouring with rain at the time and he had spent the last few hours stopping random students to look at a picture of Jumin and ask in a perfectly rehearsed way if they recognised him. He liked to think that it was the rain dripping from everyone’s hair and noses that left them unwilling to talk to him and not the fact that he was a complete stranger. As it was, though, no one gave him any clues about Jumin and he only happened to be standing outside of it when he left.

Jihyun had planned to say something meaningful, but it all went out of the window the moment Jumin took in his drenched form and demanded to know what on earth he was doing there.

“Surprise!” He had said instead. “I was in the area. Thought I’d say hi.”

And he regretted that his first kiss came less than a week later, from some Parisian girl with auburn hair who sat fully clothed in the bathtub to smoke and whose name he forgot immediately afterwards.

He regretted seeing every inch of Rika so clearly as if illuminated by a golden halo. A halo that burned ever brighter until he could no longer make out her face beneath, nor make out the burn marks where it touched her skin.

Jihyun regretted sitting in his car in the middle of the night, soaked to the skin with a cup of bad coffee. He regretted calling Jumin at that moment, with the intention of saying something equally as meaningful as he had wanted to outside of the Bodleian. But he backed out that time around too, changing the subject and speaking of coffee dates he never meant to share.

He wished he had gone for that coffee. Wished they had only taken the time to sit in some warm corner of one of his favourite haunts, even if he knew that Jumin would have been restless and he likely would have been too. In the end, however, they did not see other very much at all until several months later, when a stranger arrived in Rika’s apartment.

At the time, Jihyun had two expectations of Nari. That she would appear as a faceless stranger and leave before he could consider his mistakes. The other was that her motivations were deep, dark and sinister and her presence among his friends was the result of one mistake in particular, though he did not know which.

And so it was that he showed up at Jumin’s apartment the night before the RFA party with a cat in his arms, ready to break the silence that had haunted him since Paris. He regretted that decision immediately, for the moment he crossed the threshold, he caught his reflection in the mirror and comprehended for the first time the magnitude of the empty words in his throat.

He did not know what it was he meant to say to Jumin and yet the words lingered at the back of his mind like a favourite song or a poem he had waited his life trying to put to paper. Later on, as he cursed his own cowardice, he supposed the metaphor ran true.

To say that Jumin had not expected him was an understatement, although in retrospect Jihyun imagined the expression of pure surprise had more than a little to do with his threadbare cardigan and haggard facade.

As Jumin greeted him, every carefully considered word evaporated; as if he watched the entire scene play out from underwater.

He did not know why, but at some point he had come to believe that the stranger from the chatroom was just another Parisian girl; another pretty face to chat on the messenger and disappear into smoke. He did not know when he had taken comfort in the idea, but ultimately, he regretted allowing himself to fall into his own illusion.

In reality, however, she was something he had never encountered before and he regretted the fact that he had not come to know her sooner. She was soft light and calm tides and he could not bring himself to hate her for being everything that he was not. Instead he averted his gaze as Nari kissed Jumin on the cheek and said her goodbyes.

At some point between the car ride and waving goodbye to Nari as she returned to Rika’s apartment, it occurred to him that perhaps he was the one destined to fade away all along, and the truth had reached him twenty years too late.

One of the biggest regrets of his life was that he had little choice but to move in with them both in the aftermath of his eye surgery. He could not stand their patience, nor their smiles at breakfast. He was unworthy of such a thing and any given time he took a deep breath, he was quite convinced that he would overflow with words he could never take back.

At any given moment that he and Jumin were left completely alone, he found some way to remove himself for fear that he would begin to speak and never fall silent for as long as he lived.

He considered it fortunate that Jumin was not home so often and on the occasions that he was, he could call upon either Nari or Elizabeth as a distraction. The moment Jumin glanced at him overlong in the familiar fashion from poker, Jihyun would lift Elizabeth into his arms or turn to Nari and pick up the threads of a prior conversation. And he regretted it, of course, for all of the things he meant her to be to him, it had never been as a crutch.

Even so, he found that his heart skipped a beat at the news that Nari’s mother had taken ill and he lingered outside of the bedroom door as she packed her bags for a weekend visit. He knew it was selfish, but he wanted to tell her not to leave. He wondered how obvious it would be if he packed his things too and claimed a full recovery.

She did not spot him standing there until she turned to fetch her toothbrush and gasped, taking two steps backwards towards the bed. The shock quickly turned to amusement, however, and she laughed out loud even as she leaned over to clutch at her chest.

“V, you’re so quiet!” She cried out. “We need to get you one of those little bell collars.”

“You think it will go with my outfit?”

“I think you’d look charming.”

And he could not help but smile as she retreated into the ensuite bathroom, even though he was profoundly miserable. He opened his mouth to crack a joke, only to remain silent as she returned with her toothbrush.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, opening up her bedside drawer. “This was in the newspaper and I thought you’d be interested.”

She’d taken the clipping from the weather section of the previous week’s newspaper and Jihyun could not help but raise an eyebrow at its content.

“A meteor shower?” He said.

“It’s a great coincidence, right?” She said, fastening her bag. “You were only talking last week about how much you and Jumin liked to stargaze when you were little.”

It was true that he had referenced it in an attempt to change the subject. He had not thought she would remember, though. She had been so busy laughing at the idea of Jumin indignantly searching through college level textbooks for the name of every star that he had honestly believed she had forgotten the story involved him as well.

For a moment he almost regretted telling her otherwise. He almost believed he would prefer her not to acknowledge him.

He screwed up the clipping while she wasn’t looking with the intention of throwing it into the garbage after she left, only to unravel it and reread it when he was alone.

She was right, after all. He remembered climbing to the roof of his childhood home and waiting for every light in the Han residence to be switched off before fiddling with the controls on his walkie talkie. Jumin would climb out of his bedroom window and out onto the roof of his own house and whisper into his own walkie talkie, usually complaining about the late hour or the heavy text book he had insisted on bringing with him for scientific purposes.

Back then, he was content to sit in silence. He would sit back and stare at the stars and rarely speak a word but for the occasional giggle every time he heard Jumin rifling through his books. When he did speak, it was usually to comment on the beauty of the sky.

In the end, he organised the telescope while Jumin was at work and he did not bring it up until the morning of the meteor shower. In Nari’s absence, the silence between them grew increasingly obvious and Jihyun was sure Jumin had started leaving for the office earlier on the day.

“Nari said something interesting before she left,” he said as he reached for his coffee cup. “There’s a meteor shower tonight. I...well...that is...if you would. I’d quite like to watch it.”

As soon as he said it, he took an enormous sip of coffee to hide his blushes. He wished he had never said anything. What was he thinking? There was so much he wanted to say and he feared that he did not know the limits himself. He wondered what would happen if he spoke of 2:15; if he took Jumin by the arm and told him the real reason he had gone to England.

But Jumin, who knew nothing of his conflict, and had almost certainly noticed his awkwardness, did not refuse the offer.

Jihyun regretted everything as he sat up on the roof with a warm blanket and cup of hot soup, watching Jumin roll back the sleeves of his shirt before attempting to change the settings on their binoculars. He had insisted that binoculars did not work as cameras did and sat down to read the manual from beginning to end in the half light.

“I think that's it,” he said with a satisfied smile, sitting back to peer through them. “Now we just need to wait.”

 _Wait_ , Jihyun realised, as he took a sip of soup and tried to ignore Jumin sitting down beside him and adjusting his own blankets.

“Have you heard from Nari?” He asked, glancing away as Jumin leaned down to pour himself some soup from the flask.

“She says her mother is getting much better. I offered to send Dr. Park over there to make an observation, though she reassures me it is not necessary.”

“That's good,” smiled Jihyun, lifting his binoculars to observe the sky.

Still beautiful.

“V,” said Jumin, screwing the lid onto the flask. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“You've not been yourself lately,” said Jumin. “It would be irrational of me to suggest I knew the reasons why, or to suggest that you have never kept anything from me in the past…”

He took a sip of soup and glanced up at the sky.

“...but I like to think that if there was something weighing on your mind, you would feel comfortable speaking to me about it.”

Jihyun hated hearing Jumin speak so kindly of him, knowing the truth as he did.

“I…” He said, meaning to say that he would confide everything; that the only thing weighing on his mind was the aftermath of his surgery.

He found that he could not do that, however. He sat up and put down his soup, tapping Jumin on the arm and taking a deep breath, meaning to tell him about his flight to England and the rain that soaked through his socks. He wanted to tell him about his favourite black and white photograph of a French café, in which he refined the art of ordering café au lait and sitting in a window to watch strangers walk by, all the while writing letters he would never send.

He wanted to tell Jumin that he never looked better than on the occasions there was moonlight in his hair, but he could not find the words and ultimately reached for his shoulder.

He meant to touch foreheads, to whisper something overbearing that revealed his vulnerabilities only a little at a time.

He did not expect Jumin to meet him halfway, touching his lips against his in a lingering kiss only broken by second, softer one to his forehead. For the first time in months, Jihyun’s mind fell silent and he stared up at Jumin, realising for the first time in well over twenty years that for all of his understanding of camera angles, at no point had he considered Jumin’s perspective on the situation.

“I'm sorry,” said Jumin, turning away as if embarrassed.

And as he reached out to cup Jumin’s face, Jihyun said something he had never said before.

“I don't regret it.”

* * *

“What's going to happen when they realise there's no meteor shower?”

Jaehee adjusted her glasses and turned to Nari, who considered the question as she tucked into her ice cream.

Nari, who among other things, happened to be pretty good at photoshop.

“I'm sure that won't be a problem,” she said, smiling softly.


End file.
